


Photos by Streetlight

by RyMagnatar



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Cigarettes, M/M, Photography
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2013-12-26
Packaged: 2018-01-06 05:57:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1103224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RyMagnatar/pseuds/RyMagnatar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eridan meets Dave on the roof of his apartment building. A conversation and impromptu photo session occurs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Photos by Streetlight

As your eyes adjusted to the darkness of the night, you smelled nicotine smoke and car exhaust. This deep into the city, the stars overhead were gone- their light stolen by the streetlamps that lined the paved roads. He stood against the low wall of the roof, leaning half-way over the side. The world below was reflected in his mirrored glasses and captured in his long range camera.

A cigarette burned, forgotten, between his fingers. Another, just a stub of ash and filter, hung from his mouth. The ground around him was littered with the butts, crushed under heel and toe and left on the gravelly rooftop to smolder uselessly. He looked like he was strung together out of smoke and wire, with papier-mâché strung over his skeleton to form the bony thing he called his body. Or you called his body. Or just was his body, with or without anyone calling it that.

You came up to the roof to…

Staring at him, watching him take pictures of the world below, you struggle to think about other things. Why did you come up here? Who was this man? Why did it matter that he was here too?

He suddenly jerks his arm, letting a curse slip from his lips as ash falls from the cigarette. The other one has gone flying to the ground before your feet, a smudge of red ember against grey stone. He’s shaking out his hand, hissing still.

Taking a step forward, gravel crunching under your feet, you walk towards him. The door to the roof swings shut behind you. The clang is loud, this far up from the sounds of traffic and pedestrians. The mirrored lenses are pointed towards you, but now, away from the streetlights, they show nothing. He lowers the butt from his lips, turns his head as though he’s looking at it, and drops it on the ground with the others. He grinds it out with his boot heel and then lifts his chin. Is he looking at you? Are you meeting his gaze through his glasses? Does he know who you are? Does _he_ know why you’re up here?

“Got a smoke?” His words are raspy; the voice of a man who hasn’t had water in days. You pat your pockets and come up with a crushed box. Pulling it out, you offer him the last of your cigarettes. He takes it and hangs it in the corner of his mouth, unlit. He lifts his camera, you watch as it shivers to the change in distance from the streets below to you at his touch. Holding it in front of his face, he says, “Come closer, into the light. I can’t see your face.”

You walk up to the wall beside him, stand facing him. The brick digs into your side as you lean against it. Grits of mortar and stone bite into your arm as you lean an elbow against it. You lean over. You look down. The world is crawling with light and life below. Faintly, you hear the snap of a camera shutter again and again. Then he’s leaning forward beside you, camera resting between his elbows. His face is lit from below, an unearthly glow of neon. Light dances across his glasses, his skin, as ads and words flash and change. “Got a light?”

You do. With a silver lighter, you bring your own little light into existence between him and you. He leans in, breathes in. The cigarette takes light and burns. He sucks in a breath, lets it out of his nose a minute later. You breathe in the smoke without much thought. A small smile pulls at the corner of his mouth, held there, pinned there by the cigarette. “You’re really quiet,” he says the words softly, as though pretending to talk only to himself. “It’s weird. Usually I’m the quiet one.”

With that, he tilts his head to the side and breathes out another little plume. You watch light glint off of the dull metal ring on his lip. You watch as his throat moves with a swallow. You watch his nostrils flare as he sends smoke out of them again. He laughs, husky and low. “You look good in this light. It suits you nicely. You should pose. I’ve got plenty of film left to use up.”

You smile a little and turn, putting your back to the brick. Your heart beats in your chest as you lean back against the wall, lean back over the world. Your foot slips and you almost fall, you nearly stop, but instead you recline against the wall like it’s the most natural thing. He takes pictures. He reaches up and takes your glasses off your face, throwing the world in to shapeless blurs distinguished only by color and light. He takes more pictures.

You feel hot under his gaze. You reach up and loosen your collar. “That’s good,” he murmurs, his voice seems so distant. “Go on.”

Essentially blind, you don’t even bother looking down at your hands. You keep looking up, looking into the camera, towards that pale blotch of light that was his face, and let your fingers do all the work. They loosen the tie. Collar button slips free, quickly followed by the next in line until your shirt is open from neck to waist and the city’s attempt at night air curls at your throat and against your skin. “Got your lighter still?” You pull it out.

“Flip it on. Hold it there. In front of you.”

Warm yellow-orange light bathes you, fills your vision. You wonder what these pictures will look like, city lights behind you, fire light before you. What will your expression be? What will your eyes look like? Will you ever see these photographs?

“That’s good. That’s enough.” You click the metal lid closed and tuck it away again. You smell his skin. He steps closer to you. You feel his breath. He slides your glasses back on your face, fingertips trailing down your jaw, down your neck before dancing away completely. You watch him. He watches you. He pulls up the camera, takes one last picture before letting it hang around his neck.

He turns his head to the side and says, “More?” He clears his throat. He says again, “Do you want more?”

You’re leaning against the brick wall. You’re staring up at him. You’re watching light shift over his face. You’re thinking about why you came up here. He says nothing more. Just waits. Just breathes in tar and breathes out smoke. Finally, you nod your head.

He takes a half step towards you, “Yeah?”

You nod again.

Then he’s right up close to you, his breath on your cheek, his warmth near your skin. “Say it. I can’t give you just what you want, if you don’t make it clear.”

It’s far more difficult to resist touching him than you imagined it would be. He looks like a cloud condensed, grey and white and lined in colors that were reflections of the world around him. You swallow your silence and find your tongue to speak. “I want more.”

There’s that smile again, pulled and pinned into place like he had to learn the expression by practicing in the mirror. He leans in, so close you can smell the salt of his skin. You can almost taste it. He pulls that cigarette from his lips, the ember bright from his breath. You swallow down fear as the ember comes close to your face, close to your mouth, the wrong side of it so close you feel the heat of it on your lips. He gestures with it, ash falling off the end with the twitching of his fingers.

“I wonder how you would look, in blue light,” his breath is so soft. Any farther away and you wouldn’t be able to hear him at all. He holds out the cigarette to you, this time ember pointed away, lets you take a breath off of it before he pulls it back again. You let the smoke burn your throat and come rushing out of your lungs. His other hand has looped itself around the front of your belt. He pulls, guiding you from the wall. “Come,” he murmurs, “Let us see just how much more you actually want.” There’s something cold in his smile, something bitter in his tone.

You are resolved. You are determined. You would exhaust him of all he had before he could possibly exhaust you. You don’t just want more. You want it all. You’re filled with greed, with pride, with impossible wrath, and you know the truth now. Truth you tried to deny. Truth you refused to see. Truth that burned like fire in your veins now.

The door to the roof clangs shut behind you two, drenching you in the darkness of the stairs. Ember light and memory guide him down to the right floor. His hand pulling on your belt guides you. You close your eyes. You let yourself smile, hard and vicious and full of all those venomous emotions.

You wanted all of him, all that was left of him, and you wouldn’t be satisfied until there was nothing left to give.


End file.
